Various mod ideas.

[Jonnywah]

I have a few ideas for Dragon Age that may interest some willing modders.

 

Mod 1

 

Better character selection

 

This mod will change the selection ring around your characters from gold to blue. I find it hard to keep track of who is selected in crowded areas. This mod would be quite helpful.

 

 

Mod 2

 

"You gain items" Descriptions

 

It gets annoying having to flick through your cluttered inventory for a new item you may require when stealing from people. This mod would replace "you gain items" with a message specifying what you have gained. For example; "You gain 12 Elfroot(s)" - "You gain Dalish Boots" etc...

 

Mod 3

 

More single shot magic spells

 

Tier 1 Fire and Lightning (AoE) spells are replaced with single shot single shot spells with 5 sec cool down times. These spells have the same effect as the original Tier 1 spells, but only affect the targeted enemy.

 

Mod 4

 

Town Portal Spell (Spirit Healer only)

 

This spell lets the caster instantly travel to anywhere (which is unlocked) on the map. Regardless whether they are in a dungeon or not. This would prevent alot of backtracking. I'm unsure how it would affect certain encounters when travelling by foot on the map, due to some of the main story line relying on those encounters.

This spell has a cooldown time of 20 mins, to prevent it from being abused, so use it wisely.

 

Mod 5

 

Beacon of Light spell (Spirit Healer only)

 

This spell allows the caster to cast a "checkpoint" anywhere in the province that they are in, which can then later be teleported. Only one Beacon can be set at any one time.

 

Mod 6

 

Larger Combat Text

 

This mod simply increases the size of the combat text, when in battle. The Vanilla combat text is very small and is sometimes hard to see exactly how much damage you are dealing to the target. I have sometimes not realised that the target is immune to certain attacks because of this small text.

 

Mod 7

 

Slow Motion mod

 

We all love those slow motion kill sequences when slaying bosses, so why not have them for normal monster deaths? This mod would sometimes trigger when when you perform a "messy kill" on a monster. Alternatively, the slow mo mode could be activated by hitting a key. It would be very handy for making cool videos with.

 

 

 

Let me know what you think.

 

More mod ideas to be added to this thread.

[DarkeWolf]

mod idea #2 is already handled. you can download a program called DA Mutator- http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=166

which has many nice mod options. one of them being the option that tells you what you just gained. I've used it ever since I very started playing the game.

 

Mod #4 is inadvisable. As you said, there are encounters in your travels which are flagged by the game. By Bypassing those encounters, the player would miss out on certain events they may want, or need. Such as for example the ability to recruit Zevrahn.

[Jonnywah]

That was my concern. Perhaps a spell to return to camp? That way it wouldn't mess up the encounters.

[DarkeWolf]

there's also another problem being that there's a couple of situations in the game, where if you leave the area, you screw it all up. Lothering for example. The defense of redcliffe, for another. Tower of magi isnt meant to be left once it's begun.

Lothering becomes destroyed once you leave, and if you leave redcliffe before defeating the undead invaders, it does too.

 

I dont want to sound like I'm trying to bash on your ideas. I like some of them. And I will always encourage many ideas. I'm just pointing out some potential bugs that would have to be addressed.

 

now, there IS a mod where you can get a "pocket camp". http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=410

I however can't rate it, as I'm one of the few people who can't get the item to use to get there, to spawn in my inventory :(

[Jonnywah]

I'm always in favour of honest opinions. You're right, there would be too many flaws with quick travel, though it would make life in Dragon Age alot easier. It can't help to throw ideas out there anyhow. :)

 

I might try that pocket camp mod, once there is a final release.

[DarkeWolf]

I agree, honesty is good, as long as it's constructive :)

I think the first step would be to make it so that you could over-ride the settings which say that you can't open up the world map inside towns/dungeons.

I personally would want it to be scripted so that it can't be used in combat, as a cheat to get out of say.... the fight with the archdemon?

 

I really do agree that some of the travel needs to be worked upon. Just earlier I was doing my 3rd runthru of the ashes quest. Took a couple of wrong doors and well... got lost. An extra ten minutes spent running around a maze that woulda been spent happily commiting mass mayhem if I'd had a means of recalling to an earlier location, without having to load a prior save.

 

I know that one of the problems has a partial PARTIAL fix. which is the problem with getting overstocked and not having any merchants around to unload. There's a mod called enigma battle dungeon which can give you two new party members (IF you can get them to show up in the party selection screen.)

one named vishala, which is a warrior merchant. to the best of my knowledge, she remains a merchant even after recruiting her. (again, I'm one of the peeps that cant get the new party selection screen to work). http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=315

that, combined with meta-game-items' sycophant summoner http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13

which allows you to change your party anywhere. viola, instant merchant whenever you need. (assuming you can get the new party screen to work....) the other method would be to just recruit vishala and never take her out of the party ....

[Jonnywah]

I wouldn't want to get any mods that make the game too easy, so to speak. Like a merch in my party. Perhaps a courier that can be summoned at any location who will take your items back to camp and place them in a storage chest (at a fee, regarding on how much items he must take back.)

[DarkeWolf]

I remember a mod that was something like that. Magic bag of holding, or something like that. It had bugs tho, so I never downloaded it to try it out.

 

The part of being able to zap to set locations wouldnt be very hard for the skilled. just create an item or skill that when activated moves your player to XYZ. probably do so via scripts. since in fairplay you'd want to script it so as not to work during combat. Locations would be easy enough to get via the toolset. Every city has a point flagged in it's level (in the level editor) of transport points. just copy those into the city recall script, and you'd pop into the city as if you'd map traveled there. the way that followers are scripted, they SHOULD travel along with you automatically already. (NICE that).

 

granted I've forgotten waaaay too much of scripting but it would be something to the affect of ondoubleclick moveplayercharacter something something then the xyz coordinates. (or at least thats kinda what it would be in the game I used to mod, DA probly has different references).

then a check to see if combat is active.... if incombat= 1 something something display message "Sorry you're busy right now and can't travel"

 

I'll say this tho, this would be DARNED handy after the end of the game, when the vanilla map gets closed off to us!

 

Some more spells would be nice. I'd like to see some more ranged abilities to warriors.

 

I will say this tho, at least in this game we can map travel. Back in morrowind, running from all points to all points was tedious and usually boring after you'd traveled that path once.

[Jonnywah]

I agree that more spells and skills would be nice. I have many new skill ideas that would be useful (not overpowered). If only I could find a non-confusing tutorial for DA Toolset on scripting new skills..

 

I would also really like to implement new skill combos with codex references. Do you know of any good scripting tutorials?

[DarkeWolf]

lol yeah, the toolset has been something that's been kind of confusing to me too.

 

I believe that the scripting language that DA uses is C++ And that it's not widely used anymore.

which all said, sucks. Its obscure now that C# and C## are out, it's linux based, and involves a lot of stuff like geometry and calculous according to my instructor here at school. Other than doing a search for Object Oriented C++ tutorials, I'm afraid that I dont really know of any "good" sources of info on it :(